Since the wage in China is going up, many businesses are now moving their factories elsewhere like Vietnam. This short documentary explains the impact of this shift on the Chinese societies as well as on the global economy.

Exploiting arbitrage opportunities in the labor market can have a positive impact in that it can boost the economy of poor nations. Since the arbitrageurs will always look for the cheapest economies (therefore the poorest in most cases), those in need are automatically found and taken care of. But the problem we are facing now is the speed of change. The products and services in demand shift very quickly these days, which means our skills and knowledge also have to keep up with that speed. But we humans cannot indefinitely keep increasing the speed of adapting to change, but the market collectively can keep getting faster indefinitely.

This is easy to see even within ourselves. It does not take much effort on our part to consume new products and services, so we can quickly shift from one product to the next. But on the production side of the equation, the speed at which we can learn to produce a new product is limited by our ability to acquire new skills and knowledge, which has a hard limit, just as we cannot forever keep running faster.

This is big part of the reason why the labor force is getting younger and younger, because the younger people can learn new skills quicker. The older people have advantage in more intangible aspects of business like leadership skills, negotiation skills, market insights, and strategic thinking. But not many jobs with these skills are available or needed. So, what happens to the rest of the older people? You see it in this documentary.

The half-life of our skills will keep getting shorter and shorter. Eventually, we’ll reach an absurd point where our skill will become obsolete by the time we finish learning it. To avoid this rat race, everyone will try to be at the managerial level where they can buy or discard other people’s skills as the market shifts rapidly, but the competition at that level will become impossibly stiff. I’m not sure what the solution is.

The Chinese started immigrating to the US during the Gold Rush around 1850. The vast majority of them were from a small city in China formally known as Canton. This is why the Chinese food in the US are derivatives of the Cantonese cuisine. So, here in America, we have a very skewed idea of what “Chinese” food is. Compounding this problem is also the fact that these immigrants were not professional chefs or cooks; they were ordinary, lower-class Chinese people trying to replicate what they used to eat back home.

This is where Cecilia Chiang comes in. She is the subject of this new documentary, Soul of a Banquet, by Wayne Wang who directed one of my favorite films of all time, Smoke. She came from a wealthy Chinese family who was immersed in the haute cuisine of China. Dismayed by the state of Chinese food in the US, she tirelessly worked to educate the American public of the true depth and breadth of Chinese cuisine.

The first half of the film is about Chiang’s life, how she ended up in the US and accidentally became a restauranteur. The story of her visit back to China to see her family is tragic and moving. She started telling the story in English but switched to Chinese. Although I do not speak Chinese, the nonverbal communication was clearly enhanced by the switch.

The film also explains how Communism caused cultural amnesia in China, and Chiang’s role in preserving the memories. Because Communism went on for so long that certain cultural traditions and knowledge were lost; it was as if people stopped talking for a whole generation. Those who fled the country (many chefs to Taiwan) played a key role in preserving their traditions.

The second half beautifully documents the banquet that Chiang hosted at her home for her close friends. The dishes she served were so unusual that they didn’t seem Chinese to me. It becomes clear in the film that, for Chiang, food is a form of performing art; the food itself is only part of the whole experience she designs.

If you are a foodie, this film is a must-see. It tells an important story of one of the most influential cuisines of the world.

Apple just released their diversity report, and many are saying there are no surprises, but I’m a little surprised. If you read the headlines only, you would think Apple and other tech companies are privileging white workers, but that is apparently not the case. Take a look at the chart I created below. The percentages of white people at these tech companies are less than the percentage of Whites in the US, which means they are not doing particularly well in the tech sector. Given that Whites in the US have natural advantages, even if they held the same US percentage, it would imply that they are underperforming. The biggest issue here is obviously the Asians. The race that accounts only for 4.4% of the US population is filling up 15% of Apple, 30% of Google, and 34% of Facebook. In other words, all the other races are being squeezed by Asians, not by Whites.

“July 4th, 1968, Han Kang navigates through the day in a small homogenous suburban town as the only Asian American teenager. Today, both the anniversary of America’s independence and the death of a dear African American friend, ignites celebration, mourning, anger, and revelation.”